Family Bible: A Memoir (Wednesday 10/1 @ 7 pm (@ Hoole, of course!)

Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 1, 2008, Melissa J. Delbridge will discuss and read from her memoir, Family Bible (UIowa Press, 2008). The event will take place at the Hoole Special Collections Library located on the 2nd floor of Mary Harmon Bryant Hall on The University of Alabama campus (500 Hackberry Lane).

A native of Tuscaloosa and UA alum, Melissa Delbridge has published essays and short stories in the Antioch Review, Southern Humanities Review, Third Coast, and other journals. She is an archivist in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University. Delbridge lives with her family in Orange County, North Carolina, where she spends her leisure time letting the dogs in and out, making pickles, plotting vengeance, substantiating rumors, and working on a novel.

Her book, along with many, many others are a part of the Hoole Library's Alabama Collection - as she is an Alabama native.

Please join us for what will certainly be a great event. This is part of the UA Libraries' lecture series and is co-sponsored by New College.

“Delbridge knows sorrow like she knows the rhythm of her own heart. . . . Fans of Carson McCullers won't want to miss this one—witty, tragic, and relentlessly wise.”

—Booklist, starred review

Tonight at Hoole: The Gladney Lecture for Justice and Social Change with the Rev. Dr. Dorsey Odell Blake

Please join at the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, 2nd Floor Mary Harmon Bryant Hall at 7:30 this evening, Wednesday, April 2nd for the 2008 The Rose Gladney Lecture for Justice and Social Change with Rev. Dr. Dorsey Odell Blake.

Rev. Dr. Blake's lecture is entitled "40 Years after King: Wilderness or Promised Land".



A copy of the flier for download is available here:
http://www.lib.ua.edu/events/documents/blake_flier_final.pdf

Rev. Blake was the first head of the African American Studies Program at the University of Alabama, and was the first full-time African-American Male faculty member (1972-1977 at UA). Dr. Dorsey Odell Blake is the Presiding Minister of The Church for The Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, CA. Founded in 1944 during a time of local, national, and global tension and conflict, The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples is the nation's first interracial, interfaith congregation. Its mission, as articulated by co-founding pastors, Dr. Howard Thurman and Dr. Alfred Fisk, and visionary members, was to create a religious fellowship that transcended artificial barriers of race, nation, culture, gender, and social distinctions.

In establishing the context for the lecture series, Rose Gladney has written: "This great experiment in democratic governance which we call America draws strength from multiple human struggles to create not only a more physically comfortable life, but also a just and equitable society. I am fortunate to have grown into adulthood in the midst of the 20th century's greatest examples of such struggle: the African-American liberation movement, the women's liberation movement, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender liberation movements—all symbols and symptoms of the larger human struggle for justice and social change." Dr. Rose Gladney is a retired UA Professor of American Studies. The Rose Gladney Lecture for Justice and Social Change was endowed in her honor.

The Gladney Lecture is co-sponsored by UA Libraries, American Studies, Honor's College, New College, Religious Studies, Women's Studies, African American Studies Program, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Diversity Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences.